Progress in the Good: a Defense of the Thomistic Unity Thesis

Journal of Moral Theology, Vol. 3, No. 1 (2014): 147-174

Progress in the Good: A Defense of the Thomistic Unity Thesis

Andrew Kim

HE UNITY THESIS refers to the view that a single virtue cannot be possessed in isolation from the other virtues.1 It is a thesis with a long and complex history. Socrates is already in a defensive posture when he first defends the thesis againstT the commonsense point of view espoused by Protagoras in the early dialogues.2 Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Augustine, and Aquinas all affirm versions of the thesis that, as Alasdair MacIntyre notes, “differ… from each other in a number of important ways.”3 Whatever historical interest it may have today, the unity thesis is al- most universally rejected by contemporary ethicists.4 Though critiques of the unity thesis are manifold and cannot be summarized under one head, the common denominator of these critiques may be stated as follows: if the unity thesis is true, then no one is virtuous. This is because the unity thesis appears to totalize virtue attribu-

1My focus throughout is on the cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude. 2 Protagoras 359 b-c. See T. Penner, “The Unity of Virtue,” The Philosophical Re- view 82 (1973): 35-68; “What Laches and Nicias Miss—And Whether Socrates Thinks Courage is Merely a Part of Virtue,” Ancient Philosophy 12 (1992): 1-27; P. Woodruff, “Socrates on the Parts of Virtue,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Sup- plementary volume, 2 (1976): 101-16; T.H. Irwin, Plato’s Moral Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 86-90; M. Ferejohn, “The Unity of Virtue and the Objects of Socratic Inquiry,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 20 (1982): 1-21; “The Unity of Virtue as the Parts of Itself,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Re- search 43 (1984): 83-95; D. Devereux, “Courage and Wisdom in Plato’s Laches,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 15 (1977): 141; “The Unity of the Virtues,” The Philosophical Review 102 (1993): 765-89. For an excellent summary of the secondary literature see Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith, “Socrates and the Unity of the Virtues,” The Journal of Ethics 1 (1997): 312-15. 3 Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), 142. 4 See Jean Porter, “The Unity of the Virtues and the Ambiguity of Goodness: A Reappraisal of Aquinas’s Theory of the Virtues,” The Journal of Religious Ethics 21 (1993): 138-66; Also see Porter’s “Virtue and Sin: The Connection of the Virtues and the Case of the Flawed Saint,” Journal of Religion 75 (1995): 521-39. For an in depth treatment of rejections of the unity thesis in moral philosophy and psychology see Andrew Kim, “Thomas Aquinas on the Connection of the Virtues” (PhD diss., The Catholic University of America, 2013), 6-51. 148 Andrew Kim

tions.5 To attribute courage to John entails attributing prudence, temperance, and justice to him as well. If he lacks one or all of these latter virtues, then we must deny his courage as well. The purpose of the current essay is to show that the Thomistic version of the unity thesis is not susceptible to this charge most commonly brought against the unity thesis in general. In so doing, I show that the Tho- mistic account of virtue offers a framework for virtue attribution that avoids problems found in rival approaches. As shall become clear, critiques of the unity thesis prompt inquiry into the relationship between the unity thesis and what constitutes a virtue. This essay unfolds over four sections. First, I argue that the Stoic definition of virtue leads to an untenable position with respect to virtue attribution due to the totalizing problem described above. This section includes an analysis of Augustine’s criticism of the Stoic view and charts a part of the development of that criticism in the thought of Aquinas’s medieval predecessors and in Aquinas’s own work. Based on my analysis of these criticisms, I respond to a common misconception by showing that denial of the Stoic totalizing of virtue does not entail denial of the unity thesis. This is significant because to reject the unity thesis is to redefine virtues as mere skills direct-able to good or bad, which leads to internally inconsistent virtue attributions. The third section shows how Aquinas avoids the aforementioned problems by affirming both the unity thesis and that virtue in the conditions of this world is possessed by degrees in stages of time. The concluding section provides final summary of the findings of this essay as well as the limitations of these findings.

THE STOICS The purpose of this section is to demonstrate that the Stoics’ definition of virtue leads them to an untenable position with respect to virtue attribution. The early Stoics advanced a form of the unity thesis that is bound up with their definition of virtue. However, Augus- tine, Aquinas’s scholastic predecessors, and Aquinas himself recognized that rejecting the Stoic totalizing of virtue did not entail rejecting the unity thesis in toto, only the Stoic version of it. This is significant since unqualified rejection of the unity thesis leads to accounts of virtue that are problematic for reasons made apparent in the next section.

5 By “virtue attributions” I mean claims that a given individual possesses a discrete virtue. Critics of the unity thesis regard it as “totalizing” virtue attributions since, if it is true that to possess one virtue is to possess them all, then any attribution of a discrete virtue entails an attribution of every virtue. Progress in the Good 149

The problem of ‘capped off’ virtue The definition of virtue espoused by the early Stoics renders virtue attribution impossible, because it entails that a person is not virtuous to any degree until he has reached the summit of his moral po- tential.6 The moral austerity of the Stoics is expressed in a salient metaphor:

For just as those who are submerged in the ocean cannot breathe, whether they are so close to the surface that they are just about to emerge or they are down deep…so too whoever is making little progress toward the habit of virtue is no less in misery than one who has not progressed at all.7

As Laertius understands it, the point of this metaphor is to deny the reality of moral progress. Though the passage distinguishes between those “making little progress” and those who have “not progressed at all,” the point is that these groups are, in any important sense, in the same position. Drowning is drowning. Another analogy the Stoics employed was that of “a puppy which is just about to open its eyes.” The Stoics argued that “a puppy which is just about to open its eyes is no less blind than one which has just been born. Either it sees or it does not. Either one can breathe or one cannot; either one is guilty or one is not.”8 Again, there is no significant difference between the sight of the newborn puppy and the one “about to open its eyes.” It either can see or it cannot. J.M. Rist has analyzed the import of Stoic analogies regarding their view of the moral life:

A piece of wood is either straight or it is not; there are no degrees of straightness any more than degrees of justice. The wise man differs from everybody else not in degree but in kind. Just as a proposition is either true or not-true, so men are either moral or not moral. One

6 Diogenes Laertius (ca. 250 A.D.) understands the Stoics to reject the Peripatetic claim that there exists a middle position wherein one is progressing towards virtue without yet possessing it: “while the Peripatetics say that progress lies between virtue and vice,” the Stoics “believed there is nothing between virtue and vice.” Vitae 7.127, trans. Inwood and Gerson 144; cited in R.E. Houser, The Cardinal Virtues: Aquinas, Albert, and Philip the Chancellor (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediae- val Studies, 2004), 17. 7 Cicero, De finibus 3.14.48. Augustine references this in Letter 167 to Jerome ex- amined below. 8 Cicero, De Finibus 3.48 (Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, ed. J. Von Arnim (Leip- zig: Teubner, 1903-1924), III 530), 4.75 (Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, III 531); Plut., CN 1063A (Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, III 539). Cited in J.M. Rist, Stoic Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 83. 150 Andrew Kim

thing cannot be “more” true or “more” false than another; and morality is similar.9

The early Stoics were unwilling to concede to the commonsense point of view that some wood is less bent than other wood and some men are less moral than others and so forth. According to Rist, this is because the Stoics were “afraid” of polluting the very concept of moral goodness:

If the concept of moral goodness admits of degrees, who can say that it could reach a term? If Smith is better than Jones, who is better than Thomas, how can any man be said to be perfect. Could not some moral improvement be imagined? In other words, how could there be a sage or wise man? The Stoics in fact reject a form of the ontological argument in advance. For them, if there are degrees of moral goodness, there cannot be a good, only a relative good.10

Thus, in defining virtue as an absolute state not subject to gradation the Stoics eliminate the possibility of degrees of moral progress. As Rist has observed, the Stoic dilemma “is a Platonic one.” The Stoic “wants to say that the perfectly good man is of a different kind from people trying to be good.” However, whereas the Platonist can “re- move the perfect example to another world,” the Stoic, since he is a monist, has “no other world in which to put him.” For this reason, according to their view, “only wholly imperfect examples must exist alongside him in the only world that there is.”11 Simply put, the problem with the Stoic view is that the virtuous life has to be “capped off” in order to be virtuous in any respect.12 Anyone who has room left to morally progress lacks virtue completely. Therefore, the Stoic definition of virtue commits them to an untenable position with respect to virtue attribution. Indeed, it does not even appear as though we can think of virtue as an ideal to be approximated more or less even if never fully achieved. What would it mean to “approxi- mate” breathing or seeing? Rather, for the early Stoics, to be virtuous is to be beyond improvement, to be morally perfect. Virtue is nothing other than a description of this state.

9 Diogenes Latrius, 7.227 (Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, III 536); De Finibus 3.34; and Stob., Ecl. 2, 106, 21 W. (Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, III 528). Rist, Stoic Philosophy, 83. 10 Rist, Stoic Philosophy, 84. 11 Rist, Stoic Philosophy, 84. 12 Daniel McInerny, The Difficult Good: A Thomistic Approach to Moral Conflict and Human Happiness (New York: Fordham University Press, 2006), 85. Progress in the Good 151

From Augustine to Aquinas There is a long tradition of rejecting the impossible standard for virtue set by the Stoics. This tradition is initiated in part by Augus- tine, who locates the true end of man beyond the conditions of this world and is thus able to posit a key distinction between possessing virtue by degrees as is proper in this life, and possessing it in an “absolutely perfect” state as is possible only beyond this life. In this manner, Augustine denies that only “capped off” virtue is truly virtue:

To sum up briefly the general view I have about virtue so far as re- lates to right living: Virtue is the charity by which what ought to be loved is loved. This charity exists more in some, less in others, and in some not at all; but the greatest charity, which admits no increase, exists in no human living on earth.13

According to Augustine, the “capped off” virtue that “admits no increase” cannot be found; “it exists in no human living on earth.” The problem with the Stoic view is that it eliminates the possibility of a person becoming virtuous by positing an impossible standard. Au- gustine challenges this view by conceiving of virtue in the conditions of this world as consisting in degrees rather than an absolute state not subject to gradation:

It seems to me that the Stoics are wrong in refusing to admit that the man who is increasing in wisdom has any wisdom at all, and insisting that he has it only when he is absolutely perfect in it; not that they refuse to admit the increase, but for them he is not wise in any degree unless he suddenly springs forth into the free air of wisdom after coming up and, as it were, emerging from the depths of the sea.14

An alternative metaphor, which Augustine adopts, likens becoming virtuous to emerging from out of a dark cave and gradually adjusting to the light.15 Augustine, then, may be understood as initiating a tradition of challenging the totalizing claims associated with the Stoic definition of virtue. Though Augustine is critical of the Stoic definition of virtue, he is not critical of the unity thesis in itself. In De moribus, he affirms a

13 Augustine, Letter 167 to Jerome CSEL 44; cited in Houser 214. The driving question of Augustine’s exchange with Jerome involves the meaning and implications of the Scriptural passage which states that “whosoever shall keep the whole law but offend in one point has become guilty of all.” Augustine approaches this question by means of what he deems to be the related question of whether the person who has one virtue has them all. 14 Augustine, Epist. 167 2.4. 15 Augustine, Epist. 167 2.4. 152 Andrew Kim

Christian version of the unity thesis. Instead of equating true virtue with wisdom and the other virtues with activities of wisdom, Augus- tine defines virtue as love:

Temperance, we say, is love preserving itself in integrity and without corruption for God, fortitude is love enduring all things for the sake of God, justice is love serving only God and, therefore, ruling rightly those things subject to man, and prudence is love discerning well between those things that aid it in reaching God and those things which can impede it.16

The precedent set by Augustine, then, is not one of rejecting the unity thesis, but rather one of divorcing it from the Stoic definition of virtue. This procedure may also be found in the work of Aquinas’s immediate predecessors who proceed to reject the Stoic view along the same lines. A representative example may be found in Odon Rigaud’s comparison of the Stoic and Augustinian accounts of virtue:

[The Stoics] said that virtue always consists in the highest state. But no one can have any virtue in the highest state unless by the highest state he has all the conditions which are generally attributed to virtue. Now these virtues cannot be had in the highest state unless one has all of the virtues; and therefore, the Stoics maintained that one cannot have one virtue unless he has them all. But this position was exceedingly too strict, because according to it no one can be in the state of salvation unless he is in the highest state of perfection; and he is even not freed from condemnation whether his sins are many or few, great or small…On account of this, Augustine responds to Je- rome and the Stoics by saying “to me it seems the Stoics are de- ceived when they say that the man proficient in wisdom can only have this by being perfect in it.” For the Stoics say that just as nothing is different about a man drowning whether many stades [a Greek measurement of distance equivalent to 607 ft.] of water are above him or only water as shallow as the palm of his hand, it is the same with the raging abyss of error as opposed to wisdom. Therefore, I say that the Stoic position was deficient, as has been shown; for indeed, just as Augustine pointed out in the aforementioned passage, in the Stoic view one cannot take hold of any virtue, since one may not speak of having any one habit of virtue unless he is in the highest state, for aside from the highest state there are no degrees so as to make progress.17

16 Augustine. De Moribus 2.25; De moribus ecclesiae catholicae et de moribus Man- ichaeorum. CSEL 90. Ed. J.B. Bauer. Vienna, 1992. My translation. 17 Odon Rigaud, Bruges Ville 208 ff. 471rb-2rb; Bibl. Roy. 11614 (1542)f. 173r cited in Odon Lottin, Psychologie et morale aux XII et XIII siècles: Problèmes de morale, la connexion des vertus chez Saint Thomas d’Aquin et ses prédécesseurs, vol. 3, section 2.1 (Louvain: Editions du Mont César, 1949.), 223-5. My translation. Progress in the Good 153

Rigaud is not criticizing the unity thesis (one cannot have one virtue unless he has them all). Rather, the problem is that, given the Stoic definition of virtue only consisting in “the highest state,” the Stoic version of the unity thesis is an outgrowth of the impossible standard set by the Stoic linking of virtue exclusively with the highest state. Simply put, Rigaud is concerned with three totalizing claims made by the Stoics:

(1) “Virtue always consists in the highest state.” (Totalizing Claim 1: Virtue is an absolute state that does not allow for gradation). (2) Therefore, “one cannot take hold of any virtue” since “there are no degrees so as to make progress.” (Totalizing Claim 2: Virtue is either totally lacking in a person or totally present. There are no degrees of possession). (3) “For the Stoics say that just as nothing is different about a man drowning whether many stades of water are above him or only water as shallow as the palm of his hand, it is the same with the raging abyss of error as opposed to wisdom.” (Totalizing Claim 3: To attain virtue is to suddenly and instantaneously transition from one total state to another total state, e.g. from drowning to not drowning).

Rigaud’s criticism, then, is of the kind of unity thesis that follows from the Stoic definition of virtue consisting in the highest state: “virtues cannot be had in the highest state unless one has all of the virtues; and therefore, the Stoics maintained that one cannot have one virtue unless he has them all.” Hence, Rigaud’s critique is not of the unity thesis as such. He, like Augustine, affirms the unity of the virtues.18 This is significant because theories of virtue which deny

18 Lottin, Psychologie et morale aux XII et XIII siècles, 215. Indeed, several contemporary critiques of the unity of the virtues mistakenly conflate the unity thesis with the highest state thesis. Thus, Jean Porter argues that it is the unity thesis which leaves one unable to account for Martin Luther King Jr.’s heroic courage given his extramarital affairs. In her view, his extramarital affairs are demonstrative of a lack of prudence which obligates those who hold to a unity thesis, such as Aquinas, to deny King’s courage also. Porter fails to recognize that denying the validity of the unity thesis is of no help to King at all when the highest state thesis of the Stoics is left unaddressed. Even if courage could achieve its upper limit in isolation from the other virtues (a thesis often asserted but seldom explained by critics of the unity thesis) we would still have to question King’s courage since infidelity entails not just imprudence but a certain cowardice as well. In my view, then, Porter’s attempted defense of King’s virtuous courage is unsuccessful. See Jean Porter, “Virtue and Sin: The Connection of the Virtues and the Case of the Flawed Saint,” Journal of Religion 75 (1995): 521-39. A response to Porter’s flawed saint argument may be found in Craig Steven Titus, “Moral Development and Connecting the Virtues: Aquinas, Porter, and the Flawed Saint,” in Reinhard Hϋtter and Matthew Levering eds., Ressourcement Thomism: Sacred Doctrine, the Sacraments, and the Moral Life (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2010), 330-52. Titus argues that if “Porter had been more attentive to Aquinas’s notion of intermediate 154 Andrew Kim

the unity thesis fail to provide internally consistent virtue attributions, as I shall show. Aquinas also rejects the stringent Stoic criterion for virtue. In De virtutibus communis, the objector argues that virtue cannot increase: “Something that is in its character the best of its kind cannot be increased: for nothing can be better than the best, nor whiter than pure whiteness. However, the character of virtue is that it is the best of its kind, for virtue is the upper limit of a capacity. Therefore virtue cannot be increased.”19 Here, the objector has defined virtue as an absolute state (“upper limit”) not allowing for gradation, but Aquinas responds to the objector by redefining virtue as consisting in degrees:

The character of virtue does not consist in being the best of its kind in itself, but with reference to its object. For it is through virtue that someone is ordered towards the upper limit of his capacity, that is towards doing things well. That is why Aristotle says that virtue is the tendency of something complete towards what is best. However, someone can be more disposed or less disposed towards what is best; accordingly, he has virtue to a greater or lesser degree.20

Later, an objector argues that virtue cannot increase, because it is an absolute state, and nothing can advance “beyond its own completeness because that is a thing’s finishing point.” The objector regards this definition as consistent with Aristotle’s understanding of virtue, since Aristotle describes virtue as a “tendency of something complete towards what is best.”21 Here again, Aquinas responds by positing degrees of completeness with respect to the possession of virtue. One does not need to have reached his or her “finishing point” to be said to possess virtue: “Not everything that is complete in some sense is as complete as possible, but only what is actualized to its upper limit. Therefore nothing prevents something from being com-

states between virtue and vice, the imperfect-perfect distinction concerning the con- nections between the virtues, and the process of returning to grace and charity after grave sin, she could have accounted better for the type of flaw and the type of virtue exhibited by Martin Luther King Jr. In particular, she would have recognized Aqui- nas’s account of the possibility of an imperfect connection of charity and the other infused virtues, since one act of charity does not guarantee the next and since the infused virtues are possessed in inchoate states (habituales formae) before they are put into practice” (350-1). In my view, introducing a category of imperfectly connected infused virtue into Aquinas’s virtue theory, which I do not believe Aquinas actually offers, raises more problems than it solves in general and especially when applied to figures like King. Others have argued that another plausible Thomistic interpretation of King is that he was merely incontinent. See Benedict M. Guevin, O.S.B., “A Case for the Connection of the Virtues in the Flawed Saint,” Angelicum 87/3 (2010): 545-56. 19 Aquinas, De Virtutibus in Communis a. 11 obj. 15. (hereafter De virtut. comm.). 20 Aquinas, De virtut. comm. a. 11 ad. 15. 21 Aquinas, De virtut. comm. a. 11 obj. 18. Progress in the Good 155

plete with respect to virtue, and then being completed still further.”22 Aquinas clearly follows in rejecting the Stoic line of demarcation between those devoid of virtue and those absolutely perfect in it. Ra- ther, a person can possess virtue to greater or lesser degrees. I return to this in the third section of this essay.

Conclusion My purpose in this section has been to show that the Stoic view is unworkable because of their totalizing definition of virtue as an absolute state. Thus, their version of the unity thesis is unworkable since it follows from this definition. However, neither Augustine, nor Aquinas’s scholastic predecessors, nor Aquinas himself rejected the unity thesis in toto, only the Stoic version of it. Thus, they are able to affirm both an internally consistent standard for true virtue and an understanding of virtue advancing by degrees in stages of time. The Stoics were unable to affirm the latter, as this section has shown. Some accounts of virtue are unable to affirm the former, as the next section shows. From the preceding analysis it becomes clear that a theory which defines virtue as absolute and therefore not subject to gradation makes virtue attribution impossible. As Augustine re- marks, virtue “which admits no increase, exists in no human living on earth.”23 If virtue must be “capped off” to count as virtue, then either virtue is only attainable in some other world or this world is populated solely by wholly perfect exemplars of virtue alongside those utterly devoid of virtue. In addition, as John Langan has observed, this Stoic view posits “an implausibly sudden and dauntingly difficult” transition from vice to virtue.24 Hence, the Stoic view leads to the discounting of virtue as it manifests in the lives of actual people and entails either implausible descriptions of moral progress or eliminates the possibility of it altogether.

RELATIVISM AND THE VIRTUES The purpose of the current essay is to defend the Thomistic version of the unity thesis by responding to the charge most commonly brought against it. Though the Stoic definition of virtue seems susceptible to the charge that it renders virtue attribution impossible, this is due to their definition of virtue, not the fact that they upheld a

22 Aquinas, De virtut. comm. a. 11 ad. 18. 23 Augustine, Ep. 167. CSEL 44: 586-609, trans. Houser 214. 24 John P. Langan, “Augustine on the Unity and the Interconnection of the Virtues,” The Harvard Theological Review 72 (1979): 89. Bonnie Kent has also noted the “acquiring the virtues all at once problem.” Kent takes Scotus to have already observed this problem. See Kent, “Rethinking Moral Dispositions: Scotus on the Vir- tues,” in The Cambridge Companion to Duns Scotus, ed. Thomas Williams (Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 352-4. 156 Andrew Kim version of the unity thesis.25 On the other hand, redefining virtue according to a relativistic framework produces a different kind of problem with respect to virtue attribution. I realize that “relativistic” is a multivalent term. I use the term throughout the remainder of this essay to refer to the view that virtue can be specified and defined independently from truth and goodness. Such accounts lead to internally inconsistent attributions of virtue, as I shall show. By “internally inconsistent virtue attributions” I mean virtue attributions inconsistent- ly given or withheld even when delimited to a single definitional framework and corresponding set of criteria.26 The purpose of the current section is to make clear this point.

Alasdair MacIntyre In After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre redefines virtue in a relativist framework over and against a Platonic framework of moral realism.27 MacIntyre rightly notes that, despite “important differences” both Plato’s version of the unity thesis as well as versions derived from it share the meta-ethical position that true virtue is defined by its conformity to a “cosmic order which dictates the place of each virtue in a total harmonious scheme of human life.”28 This is why for

25 See Julia Annas, The Morality of Happiness (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 73-84. 26 It goes without saying that virtue attribution will be inconsistent across rival definitional frameworks and criteria for virtue. Indeed, one of the problems with contemporary criticisms of the unity thesis is that they are made on the basis of modern definitions and criteria for virtue as opposed to those definitions and criteria according to which the unity thesis was originally upheld. Consequently, the virtues that contemporary ethicists insist can exist independently of each other bear little resem- blance to the virtues that upholders of the unity thesis insist cannot exist in isolation. The debate is thus not over whether the virtues necessarily form a unity, but rather over the definition of virtue itself. Unity and disunity theses follow from rival and mutually exclusive definitional frameworks and corresponding criteria for virtue. See Kim, “Thomas Aquinas on the Connection of the Virtues,” 168-205. 27 Though I am critical of MacIntyre’s definition of virtue as delimited by specific, historically grounded, social practices, which may be good or evil, this essay may also be seen as drawing from MacIntyre’s philosophical method insofar as I am trying to show how virtue as conceived of in the Aristotelian-Augustinian synthesis of Aquinas is capable of solving problems and dilemmas which remain intractable in rival approaches. 28 Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), 142. MacIntyre’s view of Aquinas’s version of inseparability seems to have changed. See Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), 198. For a treatment of the significance of this change see Chris- topher Steven Lutz, “Is MacIntyre’s Theory of Tradition Relativistic?” in Lutz ed., Tradition in the Ethics of Alasdair MacIntyre: Relativism, Thomism and Philosophy (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2004), 65-109. Lutz argues that the most “problematic consequence of the disunity of the virtues is that they become content-less. It is possible to define the cardinal virtues in a way that leaves ample room for rival and alternative specifications of their content, while retaining some qualification that can Progress in the Good 157

Socrates and the Stoics the only virtue is wisdom, and for Plato, Ar- istotle, and Aquinas virtue must be in accord with right reason. How- ever, in MacIntyre’s view, defining virtue by its conformity to an objective moral order accessible to reason entails the problematic Stoic dichotomies treated in the previous section.29 It divides the world into perfect exemplars of virtue on the one hand alongside those utterly devoid of virtue on the other, which in addition to being false, renders moral education impossible. Thus, MacIntyre concludes that there is a “serious defect” with any “strong thesis concerning the unity of the virtues,” such as the respective theses of Ar- istotle and Aquinas.30 MacIntyre proceeds to clarify the link between his own rejection of the unity thesis and his definition of virtue:

I do have to allow that courage sometimes sustains injustice…To deny this would be to fly in the face of just those empirical facts which I invoked in criticizing Aquinas’s account of the unity of the virtues. That the virtues need initially to be defined and explained with reference to the notion of a practice thus in no way entails ap- proval of all practices in all circumstances. That the virtues…are defined not in terms of good and right practices, but of practices, does

distinguish true virtues from false virtues.” Hence, Lutz thinks that MacIntyre’s shift on the question of the unity of the virtues saves his account of virtue from relativism. In what follows I employ MacIntyre’s objection to the unity thesis without further reference to the fact that he later changed his mind, and I do this for two reasons. First, it still stands as a compelling and well stated critique that he himself has not yet fully responded to. Second, subsequent virtue theories have focused more on MacIntyre’s initial objection than his later change of mind. For instance see Robert Merrihew Adams, A Theory of Virtue (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006), 191. Adams endorses MacIntyre’s critique in After Virtue with no reference to the later change in MacIntyre’s position. 29 This is partly because MacIntyre does not seem to recognize the significance of how differing teleological conceptions of the achievement of virtue inform one’s understanding of what virtue is, how it is attained, and consequently, when a person becomes virtuous. In After Virtue, MacIntyre locates three elements of the Aristote- lian “scheme” with respect to the attainment of virtue: “Each of the three elements of the scheme—the conception of untutored human nature, the conception of the precepts of rational ethics and the conception of human-nature-as-it-could-be-if-it- realized-its-telos—requires reference to the other two if its status and function are to be intelligible” (53). He later says that “this scheme is complicated and added to, but not essentially altered when it is placed within a framework of theistic beliefs, whether Christian, as with Aquinas, or Jewish with Maimonides, or Islamic with Ibn Roschd.” One of these “complications” is that “the true end of man can no longer be completely achieved in this world” (53). However, as I argue in this essay, Augus- tine’s key insight was that locating the true end of man in this life leads to the flawed Stoic dichotomies treated above. This is not a minor complication but an essential alteration of what it means to possess virtue in this life. 30 MacIntyre, After Virtue, 180. Again, MacIntyre amends his view of Aquinas’s version of the unity thesis in Whose Justice? Which Rationality?. 158 Andrew Kim

not entail or imply that practices as actually carried through at particular times and places do not stand in need of moral criticism.31

MacIntyre’s framework for defining virtue is relativistic, since he holds virtues can be specified independently of goodness. These re- defined virtues, then, are not intrinsically linked to anything true or good and thus are not necessarily fine and noble. On these grounds, Christopher Steven Lutz has contended that “the definition of virtue in After Virtue falls prey to charges of relativism because of Mac- Intyre’s rejection of the unity of the virtues.”32 In my view, Mac- Intyre’s argument that the unity thesis is entailed by moral realism is correct, but his assumption that the totalizing claims of the Stoics are entailed by the unity thesis is false. As the next section demonstrates, there is simply no intrinsic connection between the totalizing claims of the Stoics and the Thomistic unity thesis.

The problem of content-less virtue Whereas “capped off” virtue denies virtue to everyone except the sage (wherever he is), relativistic definitions empty the virtues of moral content by divorcing them from truth and goodness. Conse- quently, attributions of virtue become arbitrary and internally inconsistent. This problem is on display in Robert Merrihew Adams’ recent work, A Theory of Virtue. Drawing from MacIntyre, Adams rejects the unity thesis on the following grounds: “there is no such thing as complete human virtue; no such thing as a fully good human life if that means a human life that could not be morally improved in any way.”33 Here Adams is conflating the unity thesis with the Stoic definition of virtue as is common. On this basis, Adams redefines virtue into discrete modules according to a relativistic and subjective framework. There are, for example, modules of courage. Adams defines courage as a “willingness to face fears and risks” with respect to “one’s most important” aims. The importance of the aims is “to be measured…by the commitment one has to them.”34 On this basis, courage, according to Adams, “can be manifested in fighting for an unjust cause, if the decision to fight and face dangers takes account of the fighter’s main aims, unjust as they may be.”35 But he adds that the fighter does not have to wholly approve of the aims so long as

31 MacIntyre, After Virtue, 200. Referenced in Lutz, “Is MacIntyre’s Theory of Tra- dition Relativistic?” 99. 32 Lutz, “Is MacIntyre’s Theory of Tradition Relativistic?” 99. 33 Adams, A Theory of Virtue, 77. For a critique of Adams’s view see Susan Wolf, “Moral Psychology and the Unity of the Virtues,” Ratio 20 (June, 2007): 145-68. Like MacIntyre, Adams conflates the Stoic definition of virtue with the unity thesis. 34 Adams, A Theory of Virtue, 173. 35 Adams, A Theory of Virtue, 176. Progress in the Good 159

“he or she be really committed to them.”36 How one can be “really committed” to aims of which one does not “wholly approve” is un- clear. More importantly, a relativistic standard has been introduced for the virtue of courage. There is no question of which aims ought to be more important than others or of distinguishing between just and unjust means of pursuing the different aims. These seem irrele- vant. Thus, the virtue of courage, under this relativistic standard, has been emptied of any moral content. Adams seems to realize that a relativistic standard of virtue is problematic. Thus, he proceeds to clarify that he is not defining courage as “compatible with every form of folly.” For example, playing “Russian roulette” may be deemed “rash (or suicidal) rather than courageous” since it demonstrates the lack of “a developed ability and willingness to take one’s most important aims into account in dealing with fears and dangers.”37 But if this is true, then courage requires at least some degree of prudence in order to count as a virtue. In my view, Adams has arbitrarily brought prudence in as a standard to disqualify one possible instance of courage (playing Rus- sian roulette) while capriciously asserting that the same standard does not apply to a soldier fighting for an unjust cause or pursuing an “important aim” in an unjust way. In the former case good judgment and courage imply each other. In the latter case they do not. On the one hand, “the ability and will to run serious risks in accordance with one’s judgment is an impressive strength that will and should be ad- mired even in those whose judgment is mediocre.”38 On the other hand, the virtue of courage presupposes “a developed ability and willingness to take one’s most important aims into account in dealing with fears and dangers.”39 Which is it? The standard being employed is internally inconsistent and leads to virtue attributions that seem arbitrary. The same inconsistency surfaces with respect to Adams’ treatment of benevolence. On the one hand, an action motivated by kind- ness (an aspect of benevolence) “may be imprudent, unfair, or un- truthful in a way that makes it wrong.” At the same time, “benevolence, as a virtue, cannot be coherently conceived as existing in modules that are too small or too local.”40 But Adams does not offer a clear criterion by which to distinguish the two. Prudence is arbitrarily brought in to sometimes disqualify certain actions and sometimes it is omitted. Simply put, with respect to both courage and benevolence, Adams employs a relativistic standard to define modules of

36 Adams, A Theory of Virtue, 176. 37 Adams, A Theory of Virtue, 179. 38 Adams, A Theory of Virtue, 187. 39 Adams, A Theory of Virtue, 179. 40 Adams, A Theory of Virtue, 179. 160 Andrew Kim

virtue, but this standard is internally inconsistent. Virtue attributions made from within this framework, as far as I have been able to determine, appear to function as the extension of subjective whims and caprices. All of this helps illuminate why the ancients originally found it necessary to link virtue to a truthful vision of reality. To illustrate, Alan Donagan admits that the “doctrine of the unity of the virtues follows if every virtue is defined as a disposition that accords with right reason,” but asks, “why so define them—except to secure that result?”41 A response to this query can be found in Lutz’s work men- tioned above. The problem with “virtues” that do not accord with right reason is that they “have no moral content” and may be “destructive rather than perfective of the person.”42 If virtue is divorced from right reason, then it loses its moral content:

Justice may be reduced to fairness. Prudence may be reduced to effective cleverness; perhaps the strongest definition possible would be effective cleverness in the pursuit of the perceived good of a whole human life. Fortitude can be reduced to “avoiding cowardice and in- temperate rashness in the face of harm and danger.” Temperance can be reduced to self-control before pleasure.43

As Lutz further contends, “any of these reductive shells of the virtues may be possessed to an admirable degree in isolation from all the others.” However to maintain that virtues do not need to be in accord with right reason “is to empty [them] of any falsifiable content.”44 If fortitude is not directed by prudence, then it reduces to an effective skill to carry through with any kind of action in the face of danger and harm. If temperance is not linked to prudence, then it reduces to an efficient knack to deny certain pleasures. Consequently, because these fragmented and content-less “virtues” operate independently of a right apprehension of the good, they may be equally present in a “Missionary of Charity or a Nazi torturer.”45 Or in neither; content-less virtues are attributed on the basis of a standard of the good that is either left totally undefined or defined as in perpetual flux thus leading to internally inconsistent virtue attributions. In sum, to maintain that a quality does not need to be in accord with right reason in order to be virtuous does enable one to refer to more things as virtuous, but this is only because the virtues have been rendered “content-less” and “unfalsifiable” by an internally in-

41 Cited in Porter, “Virtue and Sin,” 522. 42 Lutz, “Is MacIntyre’s Theory of Tradition Relativistic?” 99. 43 Lutz, “Is MacIntyre’s Theory of Tradition Relativistic?” 100. Lutz’s reference is to Macintyre, After Virtue, 180. 44 Lutz, “Is MacIntyre’s Theory of Tradition Relativistic?” 100. 45 Lutz, “Is MacIntyre’s Theory of Tradition Relativistic?” 100. Progress in the Good 161

consistent standard. More virtue attributions can be made, but only because the definition of virtue has been emptied of meaning. By insisting upon the unity of the virtues, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were responding to an issue that had emerged in the preceding philosophy, but this was not, as MacIntyre holds, the possibility of trag- ic conflict in the Sophoclean sense. Rather, it was the sophist demo- tion of virtue to an effective skill-set (useful mainly for politics).46 Virtue is a fine and noble thing, but Socrates refuses to call “a thing fine which is of the injurious and harmful sort.”47 For this reason, “virtue” without wisdom is not virtue. Therefore, Aristotle defines virtue as an “activity of the soul in accord with reason or requiring reason.”48 And Aquinas affirms this through his unity thesis as the next section demonstrates.

Conclusion We have, then, two approaches which lead to problematic virtue attributions. First, the Stoic approach is unsuccessful, because it defines virtue as an absolute state not subject to gradation. Under this definition, no one is virtuous. Second, the relativist approach fails, because it overturns the central insight that virtue is a fine and noble thing. In a relativistic framework, it would seem everyone must have at least some module of virtue, and to deny one’s virtue entails the arbitrary introduction of an internally inconsistent standard. Both “capped off” and “content-less” virtue run counter to the view that virtue “exists more in some, less in others, and in some not at all.49 Neither the Stoic nor the relativist approach is capable of describing this reality nor the process by which one progresses or regresses between states. What is needed, therefore, is an account of virtue which can accomplish both. In my view, such an account is found in the Thomistic explanation of the virtuous life to which I now turn.

46 Here I take issue with MacIntyre’s account of the context from which the unity thesis emerges. See MacIntyre, After Virtue, 163. In my view, Plato’s thesis is com- posed as a response to the moral relativism of the Sophists. See Paul Woodruff, “Rhetoric and Relativism: Protagoras and Gorgias,” in The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 101-16. Also see Kenneth C. Blanchard Jr., “The Enemies of Socrates: Piety and Sophism in the Socratic Drama,” The Review of Politics 62 (2000): 421-49; Steve Johnson, “Socrates and the Sophists: Learning from History,” British Journal of Educational Studies 46 (1998): 191-210. 47 Plato, Laches 192 c-e in John Cooper ed., Plato: Complete Works (Indiana: Hack- ett Publishing, 1997). 48 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, I. 7. §13 (1098a). I use Terence Irwin’s translation: Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Second Edition (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Pub- lishing, 1999). 49 Augustine, Ep. 167. CSEL 44: 586-609: trans. Houser 214. 162 Andrew Kim

THOMAS AQUINAS In this section, I argue that the Thomistic account of virtue, unlike the accounts considered in the previous two sections, provides a plausible and consistent framework for virtue attribution. Aquinas describes the varieties of ways people share in virtue and consistent- ly applies the unity thesis to distinguish true virtue from mere dispositions. Hence, Aquinas’s version of the unity thesis is not susceptible to the charge of totalizing. In addition, it is capable of resolving problems that the rival positions treated above cannot. One becomes virtuous when the whole soul is brought into harmonious alignment with truthful vision of the way things are; this occurs by degrees in stages of time.

The triplex gradus In De virtutibus cardinalibus Aquinas explains that there are three gradations of virtue (triplex gradus virtutum).50 The first level consists of natural dispositions to virtue which are wholly imperfect (virtutes omnino imperfectae), because they exist without prudence and so do not achieve right reason.51 The second level of virtue

50 Aquinas, De virtut. card., a. 2. My translation. Gradus literally translates as “step” or “position.” Aquinas presents his unity thesis in three different works: his Scrip- tum on the Sententiae of Peter Lombard, III. D. 36 q. 1 (1252-6); ST I-II, q. 65 (1268-71); and Quaestio disputata de virtutibus cardinalibus (1271-2). Lottin argues that Aquinas’s thesis develops to a “finalized” version by the time of De virtutibus around 1271 but that the “finalized” version is not a departure from what had been said prior. I share this view. See Odon Lottin, Psychologie et morale aux XII et XIII siècles: Problèmes de morale, la connexion des vertus chez Saint Thomas d’Aquin et ses prédécesseurs, vol. 3, section 2.1 (Louvain: Editions du Mont César, 1949), 232- 51. The above dates are taken from G. Emery, “Brief Catalogue of Works of St. Thomas Aquinas,” in J.-P. Torrell, St. Thomas Aquinas, Vol. 1: The Person and his Work, trans. Robert Royal (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1996). In what follows Latin texts are cited from Sancti Thomae de Aquino Opera Omnia (Leonine Edition, 1882) for the Summa Theologiae; Quaestiones disputate. 2 vols. (Turin and Rome: Marietti, 1964-65); for the Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard Scriptum super libros Sententiarum. Edited by P. Mandonnet and M.F. Moos. 4 vols (Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1929-47). English translations include the following: Summa Theologica, trans. by the English Dominicans, 3 volumes (New York: Benziger, 1912-36); Questions on Virtue: Quaestio disputata de virtutibus in communi, Quaestio disputata de virtutibus cardinalibus, de fraterni correctionis, E.M. Atkins and Thomas Williams eds., trans. E.M. Atkins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); St Thomas Aquinas On Love and Charity: Readings from the Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, trans. Peter A. Kwasniewski (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2008). Translations are generally taken from these sources. Where I have preferred my own translation I have noted “my translation” in the corresponding footnote. 51 It could be reasonably maintained that a “virtue” which is wholly imperfect is not a virtue at all. I think it is important that Aquinas chooses to include step 1 virtues in the triplex gradus virtutes. Doing so is consistent with Aquinas’s understanding of virtue which is authentic even if imperfect or (wholly imperfect). At the same time, scholars are right to recognize that level 1 “virtues” are not really virtues since Progress in the Good 163 achieves right reason but does not reach God because they are not combined with charity. These virtues are complete in relation to the human good (perfectae per comparationem ad bonum humanum)52 but not perfect simply. They are true but imperfect virtues. The third level describes virtues which are simply perfect (virtutum simpliciter perfectarum), because they are combined with charity (simul cum caritate).53 Natural dispositions to virtue, then, are the stuff with which every moral agent begins. As Aristotle maintained that “the virtues are in us neither by nature or against nature,”54 Aquinas understands innate qualities as mixed dispositions by which we tend to some kind of virtuous activities more than others. In fact, Aquinas does not think anyone has a natural disposition to be virtuous in every respect:

There can be a natural disposition to do what is characteristic of one virtue. However, there cannot be a disposition to do what is characteristic of all the virtues. The reason is that a natural disposition that inclines toward one virtue will also incline to conflict with [the disposition of some other virtue]. For example, someone who is naturally disposed to be courageous, which is shown in pursuing difficult things, will be less disposed toward gentleness, which consists in restraining the emotions of the aggressive faculty…Human beings, however, are apt by nature to reach goodness that is complete with respect to virtue…This could not happen by nature. Therefore it needs to happen in accordance with reason; the seeds of all virtues exist in that.55

Recall that, for Aquinas, “goodness that is complete” does not mean “capped off” in the Stoic sense. Rather, “nothing prevents something from being complete with respect to virtue, and then being complet-

Aquinas explicitly points out that natural dispositions to virtue “do not have the character of virtue, because no one can use virtue badly, according to Augustine; but one can use these inclinations badly and harmfully, if he uses them without discre- tion.” See De virtut. card., a. 2. Virtue is a fine and noble thing because it is perfective of the person, and it is perfective of the person because it is a fine and noble thing. 52 For more on Aristotle’s account of the human good see Richard Kraut, Aristotle on the Human Good (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989). Regarding Aqui- nas’s use of the term see Luke J. Lindon, “The Significance of the term Virtutes Naturalis in the Moral Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association (1957): 97-104. 53 Aquinas, De virtut. card., a. 2. Also see ST I-II q. 65, a. 2: “It is therefore clear from what has been said that only the infused virtues are perfect, and deserve to be called virtues simply: since they direct man well to the ultimate end. But the other virtues, those namely, that are acquired, are virtues in a restricted sense, but not simply, for they direct man well in respect of the last end in some particular genus of action, but not in respect to the last end simply.” 54 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, II. 1. §2 (1103a). 55 Aquinas, De virtut. comm. a. 8. ad. 10. 164 Andrew Kim

ed still further.”56 In addition to being fragmented, natural dispositions to virtue are also unstable.57 Aquinas confirms Aristotle’s account when he explains that “the name habit [habitus] implies a certain lastingness that the name disposition does not.”58 The first level of virtue, then, consists of dispositions which are fragmented and unstable. But Aquinas does not depict natural dispositions to virtue in an entirely negative light. These are “aptitudes and beginnings [rather than] perfections.”59 Hence, though the first level of virtue consists of fragmented and unstable dispositions capable of actualizing the rational soul only in a wholly imperfect way, they are also that which mark one’s beginning in the life of virtue and in a sense even makes one receptive to that life. Aquinas employs his own version of the unity thesis in order to distinguish natural dispositions to virtue from true but imperfect virtue.60 The issue here arises of the different types of perfection Aqui- nas utilizes in describing virtue. In the prima secundae q. 65 a. 2, Aquinas defines perfect virtue as that which directs the agent to his or her supernatural end: “It is therefore clear from what has been said that only the infused virtues are perfect, and deserve to be called virtues simply: since they direct man well to the ultimate [i.e. supernatural] end.”61 Again in De virtutibus cardinalibus a. 2, Aquinas explains that the third level of virtue “consists of virtues that are un- qualifiedly perfect. For such virtues make a human action unquali- fiedly good, in that it is something that attains our ultimate end.”62 But in the first article of prima secundae q. 65, Aquinas defines perfect virtue on the basis of the unity thesis:

Moral virtue may be considered either as perfect or as imperfect. An imperfect moral virtue, temperance for instance, or fortitude, is nothing but an inclination in us to do some kind of good deed, whether such inclination be in us by nature or habituation. If we take the moral virtues in this way, they are not connected: since we find men

56 Aquinas, De virtut. comm. a. 11 ad. 18. 57 Dell’Olio, Foundations of Moral Selfhood, 94. In Metaphysics 1022b—4, Aristo- tle explicitly notes how “thesis” (position or state) is included in the word “diathesis” (disposition). A “hexis” (habitus) is a more stable state (thesis) than a diathesis (disposition). See also Vernon J. Bourke, “The Role of Habitus in the Thomistic Metaphysics of Potency and Act” in R.E. Brennan ed. Essays in Thomism (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1942). 58 ST I-II q. 49, a. 2. 59 ST I-II q. 63, a. 2; q. 63, a. 1. 60 Here he quotes Gregory the Great: “one virtue without the others is either nothing at all or imperfect” (Moralia 22.1). Immediately after Aquinas notes that Augustine gives the same reason [for the division] in De Trin. vi. 4. See ST I-II q. 65, a. 1. 61 ST I-II q. 65, a. 2. 62 Aquinas, De virtut. card. a. 2. Progress in the Good 165

who, by natural temperament or by being accustomed, are prompt in doing deeds of liberality, but are not prompt in doing deeds of chas- tity. But perfect moral virtue is a habit that inclines us to do a good deed well; and if we take moral virtues in this way, we must say that they are connected, as nearly all are agreed in saying.63

Perfect virtue is distinguished from imperfect virtue, then, on the basis of attainment of the supernatural end, but also on the basis of the unity thesis. The triplex gradus resolves the apparent conflict between the first and second articles. Clearly, there is no such thing, in Aquinas’s view, as disconnected virtues ordered to separated ends.64 In the second article, Aquinas is distinguishing supernatural, infused virtue (level 3) from acquired and connected virtue (level 2). In the first article he is distinguishing connected acquired virtue from natural dispositions to virtue. Therefore, the line between natural dispositions to virtue and true virtue is the unity thesis, and Aquinas explains why this is the case in the following passage:

Some moral virtues perfect man as regards his general state, in other words, with regard to those things which have to be done in every kind of human life. Hence man needs to exercise himself at the same time in the matters of all moral virtues. And if he exercise himself, by good deeds, in all such matters, he will acquire the habits of all the moral virtues. But if he exercise himself in good deeds in regard to one matter, but not in regard to another, for instance, by behaving well in matters of anger, but not in matters of concupiscence; he will indeed acquire a certain habit of restraining his anger; but this habit will lack the nature of virtue, through the absence of prudence, which is wanting in matters of concupiscence. In the same way, natural inclinations fail to have the complete character of virtue if prudence be lacking.65

Thus, the second level of virtue is “perfect,” in the sense of connected through prudence, relative to dispositions or habits that “fail to have the complete character of virtue.” On the other hand, the same virtues are imperfect relative to the third level of virtue because they

63 ST I-II q. 65, a. 1. 64 This is an important point because some Thomists have failed to recognize this point and so inaccurately maintained that “true and perfect” virtue can be fragmented. Osborne holds that true acquired virtue can be disconnected. See Thomas Os- borne Jr., “Perfect and Imperfect Virtues in Aquinas,” The Thomist 71 (2007): 39- 64. Titus holds that infused virtue can be disconnected. See Craig Steven Titus, “Moral Development and Connecting the Virtues.” 65 ST I-II q. 65, a.1 ad. 1. There is an issue here of how a good habit can be a good habit without being a virtue. Clearly, for Aquinas, a good habit is not a virtue if “prudence be lacking.” This distinguishes Aquinas’s view from some modern accounts of virtue which do not hold to this standard. 166 Andrew Kim do not attain the ultimate end. Simply put, becoming virtuous entails the unification of the virtues through prudence.66 Prudence is key to the acquisition of virtue.67 This is because “it is proper to moral virtue to make a right choice.” However, “a right choice requires not only the inclination to the due end, by which it is directed by the habit of moral virtue, but also to be directed to choose that which is for the sake of the end.”68 Accomplishing the latter task is the special function of prudence, because prudence is the virtue which contributes to right choices insofar as it “counsels, judges, and commands those things that are for the sake of the end.”69 Of course Aquinas does not think prudence and the moral virtues can develop independently of each other. This raises what Andrew Dell’Olio has described as a “hopeless circularity” with respect to the acquisition of virtue:

66 Aristotle described the man who possessed natural virtue but lacked prudence as “a heavy body moving around unable to see,” which therefore “suffers a heavy fall.” Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, VI. 13. §1 (1144b). Aquinas fills in the metaphor by making the “heavy body” into a blind horse which “would fall more heavily the faster it runs, and the more grievously would it be hurt.” ST I-II q. 58, a. 4. The main point is that stage 1 virtue can detract from the flourishing of an overall life and even lead to self-destructive tendencies. This is similar to the idea of “semblances of virtue.” See Jean Porter, The Recovery of Virtue: The Relevance of Aquinas for Chris- tian Ethics (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1990); Lee H. Yearley, Men- cius and Aquinas: Theories of Virtue and Conceptions of Courage (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990). 67 ST I-II q. 65, a. 1- 4; q. 58, a. 4; q. 58, a. 5; DV 12. 23. Appreciation of this point enables Angela McKay Knobel to respond to the view of Osborne. See her “Pru- dence and Acquired Virtue,” Thomist 69 (2005): 535-55. Nothing in my treatment entails the depiction of reason as a “neutral” standard as conceived of in some accounts of enlightenment thought. 68 ST I-II q. 65, a. 1. The end itself is not a matter of choice though in a special way. Aquinas explains that “just as in speculative knowledge nothing hinders the principle of one demonstration or of one science from being the conclusion of another demonstration or science; while the first indemonstrable principle cannot be the conclusion of any demonstration or science; so too that which is the end in one op- eration, may be ordained to something as an end. And in this way it is a matter of choice.” See Ia IIae q. 13 a. 3. 69 ST I-II q. 65, a. 1. Prudence does not choose the ends to be achieved. The proper ends are ascertained by a capacity of practical reason called “synderesis.” See ST II- II q. 47, a. 6. Recent literature pertaining to the role of practical reason in Aquinas’s comprehensive moral theory includes the following: Russell Hittenger, The First Grace: Rediscovering the Natural Law in a Post-Christian World (Wilmington, DE: ISI books, 2007); Matthew Levering, “Natural Law and Natural Inclinations: Rhonhemier, Pinckaers, McAleer,” The Thomist 70 (2006): 155-201; Jean Porter, Nature as Reason: A Thomistic Theory of the Natural Law (Grand Rapids: Eerd- mans, 2005); Martin Rhonheimer, Natural Law and Practical Reason: A Thomist View of Moral Autonomy, trans. Gerald Malsbary (NY: Fordham University Press, 2000). Progress in the Good 167

For, while the perfection of prudence presupposes the proper ordina- tion of the appetites toward the good brought about by the moral virtues, in order for the appetites to be well-ordered toward the good, they must conform to their rational mean in light of one’s overall good. As we have seen, this is only possible through the judgments of prudence. So the moral virtues require prudence for their perfection as virtues, just as prudence requires the moral virtues for its own perfection as a virtue. But then how is anyone ever to become perfectly virtuous without already possessing all the virtues in their perfect state?70

If one cannot acquire prudence without the moral virtues, and if one cannot acquire the moral virtues without prudence, then it seems one cannot attain any virtue at all. If this were true, then Aquinas’s unity thesis would indeed be susceptible to the charge of making virtue attributions impossible. But this is not the case. Aquinas’s theory of attainment echoes that of Aristotle: act virtuously. Even though it is not possible to have the moral virtues without prudence or to have prudence without the moral virtues, it is possible to act virtuously without yet having acquired virtuous habits. Otherwise, the acquisition of any virtue (fragmented or otherwise) would indeed be impossible:

Virtue is generated by actions which are virtuous in one sense and not in another. The actions that occur before virtue exists are virtuous from the point of view of what is done. The person is doing just or brave things. They are not virtuous from the point of view of how they are done; for before someone has acquired a virtue, he does not do the things that virtue does in the way that a virtuous person does

70 Dell’Olio, Foundations of Moral Selfhood, 109-10. Dell’Olio goes on to argue that “in order to break free from this vicious cycle of virtues, the moral agent would need at least one supreme virtue which, when possessed, could itself orient the self to its ultimate end and thereby unify the various desires, actions and virtues of the agent. But Aquinas could not find the solution to this problem in Aristotle, who, as Hauerwas has maintained, does not adequately provide a way to account for “how the self acquires an orientation that gives a unity to our various actions. There is no one virtue in Aristotle that is sufficiently up to this task…It is here in his account that Aquinas turns to the resources of the Augustinian tradition. For Aquinas’s solution to this problem lays in the way in which love or charity directs the other virtues, and prudence in particular, to the divine good” (110-1). See Stanley Haurewas, A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1981); John M. Cooper, Reason and the Human Good in Aristotle (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975); Martha Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986): 373-7. As will become apparent below, I disagree with Dell’Olio. In my view, Aquinas (or Aristotle for that matter) does not need Augustine’s concept of charity to solve a problem which Aristotle’s prudence could not. Rather, Aquinas addresses this problem by positing a theory of proportional moral growth. 168 Andrew Kim

them, that is, readily, without any hesitation, with pleasure, and without difficulty.71

Even if a person can act virtuously while lacking virtuous habits, the question remains of the order in which the virtuous habits are to be acquired. Does the person first need to perfect her ability to discern the moral good and then cultivate the ability of the lower capacities to obey the judgments which follow from these discernments in various contexts? Or does one first need to acquire well-ordered appetites in order to make sound practical judgments? If judgment is “blocked” by tendencies within the lower powers, then it seems the latter is the case. But how can the lower powers become perfected while judgment is impeded? Obviously, Aquinas does not think the acquired virtues are ob- tained one by one. It is contradictory to maintain that one cannot possess one virtue without possessing them all and then assert that the virtues are acquired one by one. Rather, Aquinas equates the growing of virtuous habits to the manner in which a hand grows. As the whole hand grows, the fingers grow “at a proportional rate.” Thus, with respect to acquired virtue, as prudence (the hand) grows so too the fingers (the moral virtues) at a proportional rate.72 There- fore, in order for any given virtuous action to count towards the acquisition of a virtue it must be in accord with right reason.73 This is because the other virtues “are possessed along with” prudence.74 Aquinas explains as follows:

Certain virtues, for example, temperance, justice, and gentleness, order us in ordinary areas of human life. In this area, while one is en- gaged in one type of virtuous activity one must either also be en- gaged in exercising the other virtues; thus one will acquire the all the virtues at the same time; or else do well in respect of one and badly in respect of others. In the latter case, one will acquire a disposition that is contrary to some one of the virtues, and therefore destructive of practical wisdom [prudence]. But without practical wisdom the

71 Aquinas, De virtut. comm. a. 9 ad 13. Aristotle employs a similar argument. See Daniel McInerny, The Difficult Good, 76-80. 72 Aquinas, De virtut. card. a. 3 ad. 1. My translation; cf. a. 2 ad. 13. Ad primum ergo dicendum, quod ratio illa procedit de inaequalitate quae est et attenditur secundum ipsas virtutes, non de inaequalitate quae est secundum inesse ipsarum, de qua nunc loquimur. Caritas enim, ut ditum est, secundum se est major omnibus aliis virtutibus; sed tamen, ea crescente, etiam proportionaliter crescunt omnes aliae virtutes in uno et eodem homine; sicut digiti manus secundum se sunt inaequales, tamen proportionaliter crescunt. This is why I refer to Aquinas’s theory of “proportional moral growth.” 73 Aquinas, De virtut. card. a. 2. 74 Aquinas, De virtut. card. a. 2. ad. 10. Progress in the Good 169

tendency acquired through acting in accordance with the other virtues will not have the distinctive character of virtue.75

One’s moral choices pertain to all of the “ordinary areas of life” with which the virtues are concerned. There is no way to avoid this. Hence, because one must act in the “ordinary areas of human life,” one must either acquire virtuous dispositions connected through prudence or some other tendency without “the distinctive character of virtue.” But, as explained in the opening section of this essay, Aqui- nas does not think this means that the latter kind of people are necessarily devoid of virtue, though they may be. The opinion that they must be devoid of virtue he equates with the Stoics who erred when they said “that no one possesses a virtue without possessing it su- premely.” According to Aquinas, the Stoic position “does not seem to follow from the character of a virtue, because there is such a variety of ways in which people share in a virtue.”76 But what is this variety of ways? Is Aquinas referring only to the three levels described above? Ostensibly, three levels does not seem like much of a variety, and the first level does not even count as virtue. Two levels remain, true but imperfect virtue and simply perfect virtue. But this does not seem like much “variety” either. Attending to the multiform gradations of goodness in Aquinas’s account of virtue can help shed light on the “variety of ways in which people share in virtue.”

Gradations of completeness in Thomistic virtue Aquinas uses different terminology than Augustine to explain the distinction between perfect virtue in this life and absolutely perfect virtue in the next life. Aquinas explains that the term “complete” can be taken in three senses: “complete simply speaking; complete in relation to a thing’s nature, and complete in relation to a stage of time.” Aquinas defines “complete simply speaking” as something which is complete “in all respects and lacks no type of completeness.” He defines something as complete in relation to its nature if it “lacks nothing that is naturally possessed by that nature. For example, to say that a person’s intelligence is complete does not mean that he understands everything intelligible, but that he understands everything human beings naturally understand.” Finally, something is “complete in relation to a stage of time” if it “possesses everything that is naturally possessed at that stage: we can call a child complete if he possesses whatever a human being needs to possess at its age.” Having established his terms, Aquinas argues that “only God possesses complete charity simply speaking. Human beings may possess charity complete in relation to their nature, but not in this life. Even

75 Aquinas, De virtut. card. a. 2. ad. 9. 76 Aquinas, De virtut. card. a. 3. 170 Andrew Kim in this life we can possess charity complete in relation to the stage of time.”77 Human beings “may possess charity complete in relation to their nature, but not in this life.” Aquinas is following the Augustinian move of transferring absolutely perfect (simply complete) virtue into the next life. Virtue unfolds in “stages of time” and our virtue can be complete relative to that. Aquinas equates the unfolding of virtue with a journey toward a destination. The virtues are part of that journey. Vice impedes it. The theological virtues concern the destination directly. Charity is understood as a “virtue of man on the way,” because charity “by its very nature has an inability to remain at rest as long as it has not reached its term, and that is why charity is normally in perpetual growth.”78 This is the very reason why charity is said to increase:

Here below, charity can increase. For we are called wayfarers by reason of our being on the way to God, Who is the last end of our beatitude. In this way we advance to the extent that we draw closer to God. And it is not the steps of the body that bring us closer, but the affections of the soul. Now this approach is the result of charity, since it unites our soul to God. Consequently, it is essential to the nature of charity here below that it can increase, for if it could not, the progressive path that characterizes our earthly life would not exist. Hence the Apostle calls charity the way, when he says: “I am going to show you a yet more excellent way.”79

Aquinas posits gradations of goodness between the possession of charity in this life and the completion of charity in the next one.

77 De frat. De frat. a. 10. He concludes by noting that the one exception is Christ, since it was distinctive of him that he was both travelling and in possession of his destination at the same time. See also III Sent. d. 17 q. 2 a. 4. “I say that charity’s increase comes to some limit in each man beyond which it is not in fact increased, but nevertheless it does not come to some term beyond which it cannot in principle be increased. The reason for this is from both that which is moved according to the increase and that to which it is moved. Now that to which the soul is moved in an increase of charity is the likeness of divine charity, to which the soul is likened; and this, being infinite, can be approached infinitely more and more, and will never be perfectly equaled. On the other hand, the reason for the possibility of infinite increase on the part of the soul itself, to the extent that it receives more of the divine goodness and the very light of grace, is made all the more apt for receiving these; and therefore the more it receives, the more it is able to receive.” For the treatment in the Summa see II-II q. 24, a. 8. The perfection of charity, of course, entails the perfection of prudence. See Michael Sherwin O.P., By Knowledge & By Love: Char- ity and Knowledge in the Moral Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2005). 78 J.-P. Torrell, O.P., Saint Thomas Aquinas: Spiritual Master, vol. 2. (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2003), 353. 79 ST II-II q. 24, a. 4. Progress in the Good 171

Hence, like Augustine, Aquinas does not envision a life “here below” that has no room for moral improvement. As observed above, Aquinas arrives at his theory of moral development by means of a comparison with biological development. As the hand and fingers grow at a proportional rate, so too the virtues. Aquinas also uses the comparison with biological development to posit distinct stages which occur in the spiritual life:

The spiritual increase of charity may be compared with man’s bodily growth. We can, doubtless, distinguish many degrees, yet it has certain fixed divisions characterized by actions or pursuits corresponding to that growth. Thus infancy precedes the age of reason; another stage begins with the use of reason and speech; then comes puberty and the possibility of reproduction, and so on until full development. In like manner, the diverse degrees of charity are distinguished according to the different pursuits inspired by development itself. For at first keeping away from sin and resisting concupiscence, which lead in a direction opposed to charity, is the main concern. This con- cerns beginners, in whom charity has to be nourished or strength- ened lest it be destroyed: in the next phase, the main concern is the intention of progress in the good. This is the pursuit of the proficient, whose aim is mainly at strengthening their charity by adding to it. Finally, there is a third pursuit whose chief aim is union with and en- joyment of God. This belongs to the perfect who “depart to be with Christ.” This is the very law of motion: we see the body distance itself from its point of departure, then progressively approach, and finally, at the end, find repose.80

Commenting on this passage, J. P. Torrell has noted that “Thomas knows quite well that in life things are never so simple as in this tri- partite scheme. He thus concedes that we could envision many other gradations; but if we look at the matter closely, he says, we always come upon a scheme of this kind.”81 The person who possesses simply perfect virtue, then, is somewhere along a spectrum of gradations which fill in the space between the various kinds of spiritual perfection possible in this life and the perfection possible only in the next. Aquinas’s theory may be understood by the metaphor of a ladder reaching from earth to heaven. There are several rungs along the way and greater height amounts to greater unity of the virtues, even if absolutely perfect unity is not possible until the next life. Also, in this life we can go up as well as down the ladder. The life of virtue is a struggle and not an entirely upward movement. One never fully achieves virtue in the conditions of this world. Virtue is true to the

80 ST II-II q. 24, a. 9. 81 Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas: Spiritual Master, 360. These stages are not origi- nal to Thomas. See A. Solignac, “Voies (purgative, illuminative, unitive),” DS, vol. 16 (1994), col. 1200-15. 172 Andrew Kim extent that it is tending to become more fully virtue. Christ, who possessed the virtues of the purified soul, is of course an exception.82

Conclusion Aquinas’s version of the unity thesis does not totalize virtue attributions and is thus not susceptible to the charge most commonly brought against it. Rather, the Thomistic account of virtue affirms the basic insight that people can and do achieve some level of that virtue which is a fine and noble thing. Simply put, Aquinas avoids the problem of capped-off virtue. Also, the Thomistic account con- sistently holds that one becomes virtuous when the whole soul is brought into harmonious alignment with a truthful vision of the way things are and that this occurs by degrees over stages of time. Thus, he avoids the problem of content-less virtue. He can describe those fine and noble habits which, while falling short of absolute perfection, nonetheless surpass fragmented dispositional tendencies. There- fore, he offers a framework for virtue attribution that avoids problems found in the rival approaches reviewed above.

SUMMARY: FINDINGS AND LIMITATIONS This essay has attempted to bring three things to light with respect to the question of virtue attribution. First, Stoic and relativist descriptions make for specific problems with respect to virtue attribution. Second, a Thomistic account of virtue avoids both problems. Third, it is by upholding the unity thesis and virtue as consisting in degrees that Aquinas accomplishes this. But this, in and of itself, does not show that Aquinas’s account of virtue provides an effective framework for virtue attribution. For it could be objected that the Thomistic account of virtue really does not take us much further than Stoic or relativistic accounts. When can virtue be attributed to a person? No one is ever absolutely virtuous in this life. Without prudence unifying the virtues one cannot be said to possess a virtue. Virtue consists in degrees of completeness relative to stages of time. There is a variety of ways people share in virtue. Does any of this help to make specific attributions of virtue? Two concessions need to be made. First, this essay has presumed, rather than attempted to verify, the possibility of virtue. I have not, in this essay, treated the empirical critique of virtue.83 Second, more to

82 ST III q. 7, a. 2. 83 For the empirical critique see John M. Doris, Lack of Character (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). See also Owen Flanagan, Varieties of Moral Personality: Ethics and Psychological Realism (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991); Gilbert Harman, “Moral Philosophy Meets Social Psychology: Virtue Ethics and the Fundamental Attribution Error,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 99 (1999): 315-21; Peter Vranas, “Respect for Persons: An Epistemic and Pragmatic Investiga- tion” (PhD diss, University of Michigan, 2001). For critiques of ‘situationist psy- Progress in the Good 173 the point, if one is after precision in locating the specific moment when virtue is attained, when prudence is developed in usu, this may be impossible to locate with exactness.84 Nothing I have said in this essay resolves these two problems. But this latter problem may simply have to do with the nature of virtue itself. One must not make the mistake of demanding more precision than the subject allows. Recall the Thomistic analogy between growth in virtue and biological growth referenced above. One cannot point to the exact moment when one passes from infancy to childhood, from childhood to adolescence, from adolescence to adulthood and so forth, but it is indis- putable that these stages exist and that we pass through them. To submit that one has not developed at all until one is fully developed is clearly wrong. To claim that the stages do not conform to anything in reality because the lines dividing them can be drawn and understood differently is equally false. In the very least, the Thomistic view affirms the basic insight that people can and do share in true virtue in this life in a variety of ways while providing a plausible and consistent framework for attributing virtue to a wide spectrum of individuals. The same cannot be said for the rival approaches analyzed above, or so I have argued. Finally, this essay has only treated indirectly the question of virtue attribution with respect to those virtues which accompany the transformation brought about by God’s grace and the deepening of those virtues entailed by participation in that grace.85 Nevertheless, chology’ of the kind advanced by Doris see John Sabini and Michael Siepmann, “The Really Fundamental Attribution Error in Social Psychological Research,” Psy- chological Inquiry 12 (2001): 1-15; John Sabini and Maury Silver, “Lack of Charac- ter? Situationism Critiqued,” Ethics 115 (2005): 535-62. For a Thomistic response to Doris see my Thomas Aquinas on the Connection of the Virtues, 168-205. For an Augustinian critique of the metaphysical assumptions of situationist psychology see my “Have the Manicheans Returned? an Augustinian Alternative to Situationist Psychology,” Studies in Christian Ethics 26, no. 4 (November 2013). 84 I Sent. D. 17 q. 2 a. 3. According to Aquinas, the act by which a virtue is formed “is attained out of many good acts, insofar as a subsequent act always occurs in virtue of all the preceding ones—as is evident in drops of water hollowing a stone, where it is not each and every drop that takes away something from the stone, but rather, all the preceding ones are disposing the stone to be hollowed out.” Hence, to say that one has gone from lacking virtue to possessing it in an instant is inaccurate if it precludes the preceding development of virtue from the “many good acts” which precede it. But it is accurate when considered as the last act in a series of acts ordered to the same end. To say that an engineer has built a bridge through one stroke of a hammer is false, but to say that he has completed a bridge through one stroke of a hammer may be true. A baptized infant possesses the virtues in habitu and so his or her virtue in usu may develop, grow, and intensify as physical impedi- ments are removed. 85 See Angela McKay-Knobel, “Can Aquinas’s Infused and Acquired Virtues Co- Exist in the Christian Life?” Studies in Christian Ethics 23, no. 4 (2010): 381-96. I support the view that acquired virtues which may precede the infusion of grace are “‘taken up’ or ‘transformed’ into the infused virtues” (382). See also William C. 174 Andrew Kim since grace perfects nature, we should expect to find in the Thomistic account, and indeed do find, congruence between the unity of the acquired virtues and the transposition of unity into the higher pitch of virtue that follows from friendship with God. But even here locating the exact moment when one has taken hold of virtue may be more difficult to determine than is sometimes supposed. Indeed, as C.S. Lewis observed, this change does not happen to everyone in “a sudden flash—as it did to St. Paul or Bunyan.” It is not necessarily like the transition from drowning to breath or from blindness to sight. In fact, “it may be so gradual that no one could ever point to a particular hour or even a particular year.” But either way, the important thing “is the nature of the change itself.”86

Mattison III, “Can Christians Possess the Acquired Virtues?” Theological Studies 72 (2011): 558-85. A thorough treatment of this topic is beyond the scope of the current essay. 86 C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Harper Collins, 1952), 146.